There was a lot of anticipation for the first free practice session of the Chinese GP which returns to the F1 calendar after five years. Shanghai offers the first weekend with the Sprint Race format, leaving only one free practice session before today's Shoot out qualifying. The teams tried to exploit the hour available with very different strategies, having many unknowns to find an answer to.
The Chinese track has not changed, but the surface was first shot peened to remove dangerous bumps and then bituminised with a rather unusual technique. The result was that the fastest was Lance Stroll with Aston Martin: at the end of the session the Canadian arrived on soft tires at 1'36″302, a time which is 2″4 slower than in FP1 in 2019, despite having more competitive single-seaters.
The performance, therefore, must be taken with a grain of salt, taking into account that the evolution of the track will be enormous (the record is set by Vettel with Ferrari in 1'31″095 achieved in 2018). Each team, therefore, worked with a own plan that took into account the preparation carried out at home with the simulators.
The times must be taken with a grain of salt because if Lance Stroll emerged in the lead with the AMR24 which offers the update package that debuted in Japan, his teammate Fernando Alonso was only 19th, 2.6 seconds behind because the Asturian did not he mounted soft tyres, preferring to work with the hard compound.
Behind the “green” came Oscar Piastri with the McLaren, 327 thousandths behind Stroll. The Australian preceded Max Verstappen with the Red Bull by just 31 thousandths on the soft tires: the three-time world champion trailed Sergio Perez by a whisker, while the two Ferraris finished very far apart with Charles Leclerc only 13th and Carlos Sainz 14th, 1.7 seconds behind.
This is not surprising, because in this truly anomalous round each team worked with its own activity plan: Red Bull used two sets of tires (one medium and a second soft), while the Scuderia preferred to save a set for the weekend, choosing the soft, perhaps to try to fix the flying lap.
During the session we saw all three compounds being used: there are drivers who tried to regain the feeling with the track (only four of them didn't know it), before splitting into very different and incomparable programs: Ferrari did not simulate a long run, preferring to look for the setup of the SF-24 with the drivers making various adjustments, while Red Bull “christened” a set-up and chose to study the behavior of the tyres, doing a mini simulation with the first medium tyres. try the dry lap with the softs. Mercedes, however, went in another direction, aiming for the race with only hard tyres. The W15 showed for the umpteenth time that it was in difficulty with frequent bouncing and blocking when braking. Geroge Russell is 17th at 2″5, followed closely by Lewis Hamilton.
The seven-time world champion also saw a black and white flag waved for getting into a brawl with a Haas and a McLaren in an attempt to stay in the slipstream of Verstappen's Red Bull. Lewis, after giving up on the attempt, returned to the pits with a borderline maneuver in which he touched the white line, earning him an official warning.
Not much was understood because there were those who ran with an empty tank and those who, instead, tried a long run for the race with a decidedly lower fuel load than those who had a full tank thinking about Sunday's GP. Haas had a positive start, bringing an important update package to the VF-24: Nico Hulkenberg was fifth with Kevin Magnussen close behind. Seventh is Esteban Ocon with the updated Alpine, ahead of Daniel Ricciardo ninth with the Racing Bulls equipped with a new chassis and Valtteri Bottas who closes the Top-10 with the Sauber, followed closely by the home idol, Guanyu Zhou.
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